The Debacle Of The Common Core Reforms

This Common Core reform has been an absolute joke from the start. They cannot get anything right.
They roll out new exams before supplying curriculum guidance ... and
then blare that the results are a testimony to their flawed premise for
this nation-wide debacle. Nice try, no cigar.

Anyone can engineer
failure. And it seems no one's better than the classroom allergic
theorists that have bundled this so-called reform together ... and then
touted it as the lost Holy Grail of education. This is an educational
fiasco devised by idle musers, crafted by disconnected theorists,
financed by drooling corporate interests, and swallowed by cash-strapped
state legislatures who made a pact with the Devil.

There is almost
nothing of merit in this movement. The curriculum authors have been
revealed as disconnected practitioners who have slender
understanding of what actually takes place in learning at various
stages of development. To call most curriculum designs as
age-inappropriate is mild. The data collection is intrusive with real
potential harm for young learners as they grow through their school
experiences. Worst is the "teach to the test" practices that have
accompanied the Common Core testing mania ... at the expense of genuine
classroom learning that is best adjusted by local teachers who know and
value their students best. I want desperately to unearth something
of real merit in this movement, but it's a sort of torturing exercise.
Yes, reform should be an on-going effort. But the very best reforms are
those made by individual districts for the community population they
know best. A coast-to-coast prescription is nonsense. How can anyone
prescribe identical remedies for educating a child in NYC and one in
Greenwich, Connecticut and another in Lawrence, Kansas? Homogeneity is
hardly an American reality. I thought we prided ourselves on our rich
history of individual achievement that accompanied our commitment to
community. Goose-stepping is not what built this nation's greatness.
What local schools need most is local control ... and defined, reliable
community and state support. Local boards of education know their
communities as no one else ... and they know their faculties as no one
else. They should be the ones prescribing suitable curriculum and
instruction reforms that touch their student population with purpose.
Common Core is a federal fraud that suggests that learning can be
bottled and canned and sold a a sort of product that has nation-wide
need and appeal. Let's not even consider the fright of an educational
movement under the control of a central government. Scary stuff.
Stop this dreadful educational farce before it inflicts educational
madness on generations to come. Return control to local boards ... and
let communities do what they have done successfully since this nation
began ... educate their children.

Goose-stepping is not what built this nation's greatness...

And yet, Arne Duncan would have us all goose-stepping to the tune of the Gates/Broad/Walmart/Bloomberg reforms...